For weeks, President Biden has deflected questions about how his administration will reopen schools in his first 100 days in office by claiming he’s simply waiting for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue its guidelines. Well, now they’re finally out.
The CDC, in line with the bevy of evidence showing that schools are not a primary vector of coronavirus transmission, says that vaccinating teachers is not a prerequisite to reopening schools.
Biden must finally answer the million-dollar question: Will he listen to the science?
Will he listen to his own CDC and demand that the schools reopen? Or will he deny the science, cowering in the face of teachers union money and political muscle? Will he, out of weakness and fear, let a generation of children get dumber, fatter, and lonelier under so-called “distance learning”?
Millions of children could return to the classroom by the end of this month. The CDC says that the entire process of preparing a school for reopening should only take “between 5 and 8 hours over a 1–2-week period.” Key to keeping the schools safe are masks, distancing, hand-washing, physical cleaning of surfaces, and contact tracing. Although the CDC adds that areas with high or substantial coronavirus transmission should rely on hybrid learning for elementary school students and virtual learning for middle and high schools, it also states that K-12 schools ought to reopen completely in areas with low and medium coronavirus transmission. And again, vaccines are not a factor in any of the tiers.
“Access to vaccination should nevertheless not be considered a condition for reopening schools for in-person instruction,” the CDC states. Given that coronavirus cases are finally and precipitously plummeting, that means thousands of schools could start preparing for reopening tomorrow, and students could return in a week or two.
The CDC goes even further, however, in stating that K-12 schools ought to be the very last institutions to close “after all other mitigation measures in the community have been employed, and the first to reopen when they can do so safely.” So if bars and restaurants can be open, the schools must be open.
After months of browbeating the public with the importance of listening to “The Science,” it’s past time for Biden to buck up and demand that teachers return to the classrooms.
We have known for well over half a year now that schools are not primary vectors of virus transmission, and now Biden finally has no excuses left. The question is whether he will put the nation’s students over the Democratic interest group that is holding them hostage.
